


Unfinished business

by StarOverHeaven



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Do not repost this work to another site, Found Family, Gen, Team as Family, i cant think of tags tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:54:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28797951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven
Summary: A W.I.P work based on possible results of Wilbur's resurrection.Inspired by the common theme/visual of Dream playing chess or holding chess pieces. He wasn't always the only player. He wasn't the only one now, either. After all, another master of the game had stepped into the field.They were all predators in a flock of sheep. Dream just hadn't realized it wasn't just him and Techno anymore. Not yet.(I may not finish this, but was encouraged to post it anyway.)
Relationships: SBI Family - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	1. Dream's Visit

If anyone were to ask, he’d say he remembered being carried that day. That he remembered the smell of copper and the soft nostalgic scent of feather dander. Warm hands and arms, and a soft cloth wrapped around him to make the chill less terrible. That he remembered how his heart stuttered in his chest, beating too slow. How his lungs struggled to inflate, and his body was slow to respond. 

Wilbur isn’t supposed to be alive, but he is. He remembers death as vividly as one remembers their first friend, a smear of memory that is hard to think of yet just as easy as breathing. Death remains, forever a part of him. It was nothing like respawning. Respawning was easy, seamless, just one fading breath into the intake of another in a bed or standing in a field somewhere. 

But being resurrected? It’s nothing like that. 

The magic is almost as black as his soul, and it fits right into the ash and charcoal that remained of the person he’d been. Into the garden Ghostbur had tended, coating each golden flower like molten silver dripping from a forge. 

If Wilbur had to describe his soul, he would say it was made of blackstone, ash and rubble, of molten silver and steel and golden flowers peeking up through the cracks. Blue tears and blood in his veins, his core empty of a spark that had once burned in something made of molten gold and hope. 

Every moment of living, he is aware of how old he feels. Every movement is a little too slow, his mind and body feeling as though they were separate. He’d gotten used to not having nerves to use, to not depend on the system of meat that made a body. He had spent much of the first few minutes too-still and just trying to remember how to blink, to breathe. Trying to remember how to exist. 

Wilbur remembers meeting Phil’s eyes, seeing the tears of grief and relief there. Warm arms wrapping around a fragile body as he stared blankly, chin settled over his father’s shoulder in a parody of when he’d died. 

_Being resurrected is like living but in reverse._

He isn’t alive. He knows from the way his lungs don’t listen, the way his blood isn’t as bright a red as it should be. His heart beats an inch off-beat, sluggish and tired as his soul feels. His bones are heavier than they should be, aching inside his flesh. He’s still slightly too cold, even though he buries himself in coats and sweaters and hats and tries to hide the ugliness he can feel in his chest. 

It’s like all his organs have rotted out and nobody but him has noticed. He knows they can see how his edges don’t fit quite right, the way the world isn’t quite certain how to treat him. The scar that sits jaggedly over his heart, and he rubs it regularly just to remind himself of the pain that never left it. 

It’s like the surface of the death-wound had healed, but the rest of his flesh hadn’t. It was always raw, a carved hole inside him that bared his rotten heart to the world as it beat out of tune with the universe. 

Would he be like a Fresh, three-lived? He didn’t know. He didn’t really care, either. 

Ghostbur had had unfinished business. Wilbur had an unfinished _existence._

But first he just wanted to live. 

He savored every mug of cocoa shared with his father, and watched Phil busy himself with projects. Met Ranboo again, this time as something other than a ghost. Had smiled at the kid when his tail wagged, recognized the nervousness there. The rain wasn’t so much of a bother for him anymore, and neither was his memory. 

But. The familiarity was there. Ranboo was just a good kid, young and fresh and quick-witted. He made sense, when he spoke of sides and people. Looked too tired for someone so young, just like Tommy and Tubbo. 

He reminded Wilbur of all of them, really. Techno’s passion and belief in his causes and purposes. Philza’s determination, his belief in the best in people. Tommy’s brightness, the way he hid his doubts and fears so as to be liked better. 

_~~Tommy’s anxiety of not being loved, of being tossed away. Tommy had hidden his doubts behind bravado. Ranboo hid his behind being polite. Techno’s fear that his family would fear him, and so he pushed them all away. Ranboo didn’t try to get any closer for fear that he would be hurt again. Wilbur’s desperate need for control and attention that had eaten him away. Ranboo’s shyness of attention, his fear of peer pressure and eyes and judgement.~~_

Yet despite the similarities, Ranboo was as unique as any snowflake. His smile was bright, and he was too tall and yet never hit his head on the doorways. His tail wagged when he was excited, and when he was listened to he was entertaining. He was so _good,_ asking before he took anything and always so careful. His laughter made Wilbur’s heart ease a bit in his chest, and every time he asked Wilbur for something, or just invited him along to do some menial task, or asked Wilbur if he had food (because Ranboo had forgotten to bring some again), the days didn’t feel so empty. 

Yeah, he could see why Phil had helped him. 

_~~He tried not to think about how Phil probably saw Wilbur in Ranboo, too. Just a kid trapped in the madness of a government that had tried to sink its claws in and take Ranboo just like it had taken Wilbur. A good heart, bitten into like an apple until the rot crept in and made it all so much worse than it should be.~~_

_~~It had been, after all, been Phil who had told Wilbur once, a long time ago, that the only good government was one that helped it’s people. It hadn’t been Phil’s fault that Wilbur had sunk so much of himself into **trying to be that,** that when he lost that election he had nothing left of himself to have.~~_

_~~Phil had always had a “saving people” thing. He couldn’t save Wilbur, but maybe he could save this one.~~_

The days were longer than he remembered, quiet but warm. He pretended not to see how Phil had hid away the flint and steel, and the flint had disappeared from the chests in Techno’s house. Tried not to soak in the warmth of the fire too much, so his father didn’t worry. 

Wilbur didn’t have enough spark left in him to light another fire, anyway. 

He’d thrown all of his kindling into the flames that had born L’manberg. When he’d run out of kindling after the war, he started peeling off pieces of himself to feed the fire instead. Now he was the barest of bones of the kind leader he’d once been, tired and feeling too old for his body. 

Today, he had no plans. Techno had gone to travel with Ranboo to some mansion the kid had a map to. Phil had left to do something without mentioning what it was to Wilbur, so he was left alone in the house. Techno had set a list by the brewing stands for him, things that were easy enough to do. 

Wilbur didn’t get visitors, so he’d been prepared to curl up by the freshly rekindled fireplace with a warm blue blanket to wait for the netherwart to bubble down into the bottles right as he heard the knock. He paused, eyes narrowing, then turned to go to the door, opening it to peer through the crack with tired eyes. 

A mask met him, forever smiling. 

“Dream.” Wilbur greeted, opening the door slightly more. He squinted out at the thickening snow, the snowflakes covering the ground and Dream’s shoulders. “Come in, it’s warmer inside.” He offered after a brief moment of contemplation. “Just wipe your boots on the rug. Phil hates it when people track snow inside.” 

Dream stepped inside carefully, slowly, like a predator entering the den of another. Wilbur glanced at his shoes and then turned away as Dream cleaned off his boots on the entrance rug. 

They had left on good terms, if death could be explained off as ‘leaving’. He wasn’t worried that Dream would kill him, instead walking back to the fire and gathering an extra mug off the mantle. 

“Cocoa or something else?” He asks, as casually as he could muster. Dream paused, mask lifting to look at him, and Wilbur’s lips quirked despite himself. 

“No thanks.” Dream says. Wilbur sets the mug on the mantle again and then settles himself on the chest in the middle of the room, watching the man with half-lidded eyes as he took a sip. 

“To what do I owe the visit?” He asks, looking back to the fire. The warmth is reassuring, a reminder that he’s alive. He hadn’t felt temperatures very well when he’d been dead, had struggled to differentiate between the cold and warmth. Even now, he was always still a bit too cold. 

“Will you help Tommy?” 

Wilbur stills, and that’s his only real reaction to the sudden and unexpected question. His fingers don’t tighten their grip on his mug, and he doesn’t look at Dream or sputter or do anything. It’s like he’s a still frame in a picture for a long moment, just long enough that he senses Dream become uncomfortable. 

It was so easy to make the living forget that he wasn’t alive that when he acted like the unmortal thing he was, they were always startled back to reality. Techno, Ranboo and Phil had gotten used to Wilbur’s debatable living unlife, how sometimes he was too still or too cold or too sharp. Dream hadn’t gotten the chance yet. 

There are so many things he could say to Dream. 

_“Ruined someone else, Dream?”_

_“Need someone else to clean up your side of the chess board?”_

_“Do you really need attention so much that you’d do this all over again?”_

Wilbur doesn’t say any of those things. Instead he takes his time, as Dream stands beside him by the fire. The hum of the ender chest whispers in the room under the crackle of the flames, and his mug isn’t as warm against his fingertips. When the mug is empty, he sets it quietly to the side and then smiles like he knows a secret that nobody else does. 

Dream’s stance shifts, fingers twitching. He treats Wilbur like a threat, and it’s refreshing to be seen as one again. Dream remembers the Wilbur that had crackled like a sun going supernova, too-bright and too-hot and blistering in his madness. Everyone else sees Wilbur as a dead star, ashes left to burn away. 

Dream doesn’t. 

Wilbur turns his face to meet the eyes of the mask the other man wears with a weariness that he feels deep in his bones. He doesn’t stand because he doesn’t need to, not for this. He needed no weapon but his wit and his tongue, after all. 

“If he asks me, maybe I will.” He says, setting his head on his hand and smiling at his visitor. Ghostbur had been afraid of Dream, and for good reason. But Wilbur? He’d never feared Dream, not really. He had no reason to. They both knew one another as generals know the leader of the opposing side of a war, all the weaknesses and strengths bared to the other like a flower’s petal to the sun or the moon. 

There’s no response. He didn’t expect one. 

“Goodbye, Dream.” Wilbur says into the quietness of the room as the wind blows in through a newly-opened door and the fire goes out behind him. His eyes glint red in the shadows, as vicious and burning as hot coals left in a forest full of dry wood. 

Dream wasn’t aware of it yet, but he wasn’t the only predator here. There were others. Ones with teeth just as sharp as his, and claws that dug just as deep. No matter how complacent and tired Wilbur seemed, he was a predator. Oh, sure, not the same as Techno or Dream or even Phil - no, his weapons were not his sword and bow. No, his weapons were far more harmful, and harder to heal. 

Dream had once only known blood and blades, and had learned from Wilbur’s darkest days the efficiency of the spoken word. His attempts to use Wilbur’s techniques were effective but not good enough - a pitiful attempt compared to the webs that Wilbur had weaved. No, Dream was a younger predator, not as practiced as Wilbur was with his words or Techno was with his blade. 

But he was learning, watching them and progressing, forming his own unique technique to hunt with. He thought that they had settled, with this wary truce between them. The family in the snow had no real quarrel with him, not right now. 

Wilbur watched him march off through the snow into the trees through the window, his fingers cold against the wood frame of the windowsill. 

What Dream hadn’t realized yet was that predators don’t retire. They just find new prey. 

Wilbur smiled. 


	2. Crater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chess table is far more than three-dimensional. There are too many players for that.

“I think I want to see the crater.” Wilbur tells Phil the next morning as Techno sleeps upstairs and Ranboo lays conked out in a pile of blankets in front of the fire. The house is still warm though the flames had long become only ashes, insulated from the chilling wind outside. 

Phil side-eyes him for a long moment, fingers still where they rested on the rim of his mug. He’d never been one for tea or coffee, but he would occasionally have a cup of it when he needed the caffeine to get started on his day. The sweet berries Wilbur had gotten when he’d gone out on a trip with Ranboo made for a great mix when combined with the herbs from the garden. 

Wilbur took a sip from his cup and met Phil’s eyes. 

“Okay.” His father says after a moment, looking away. There’s a hesitation there, a wariness that Wilbur might see the crater and be angry, or grieve. That he would be reminded of what he once was, though really the difference between what Wilbur had done back then was not so different from what Techno and Phil had done not long ago. 

The house is quiet for a moment longer, a shuffling upstairs as Techno either woke or rolled over. Wilbur glanced at Ranboo to make sure their quiet conversation hadn’t woken him up, then looked back to Phil. 

“Have you talked to Tommy recently?” He asks, knowing the answer. 

“No.” 

Phil’s lips are a thin line, eyebrows lowered over tense eyes. None of them had a particularly positive relationship with Tommy right now, considering his betrayal of Techno and Phil not even a month ago. 

Wil considers him from the corner of his eyes, then turns and puts his hand on his father’s shoulder. 

“I’ll go alone. He lives near the crater. Just take care of yourself today, yeah?” 

Phil frowns. “Are you sure? It might be - “ 

Wilbur tightens his grip slightly and the other man quiets. “Phil. I’m going to be the most dangerous thing in thirty miles of that crater regardless.” 

There’s no words to give to that, and his father nods after a second of silence. Wilbur draws him into a hug, more of an arm over shoulders squeeze than a real one, and heads to the ladder to go downstairs. Phil watches him go with furrowed eyebrows and a heavy heart, uncertain, and glances out the window at the sound of the door opening downstairs. 

Wilbur fits his beanie over his head and walks off into the snow towards the portals, armorless and apparently unarmed. Despite that, he exudes the confidence of someone in full netherite, and the same danger as someone with maxed out gear. 

Phil watches him go and sips the tea in his hands. It isn’t hot anymore, and the red tint from the sweetberries only reminds him of darker thoughts. He sets the mug aside half-finished on the mantle. 

“I think I’ll replant the netherwart farm today.” He tells himself, if only to have something to do other than worry. 

* * *

Wilbur steps out of the portal with a shiver. He’d never liked the nether, just warm enough to be constantly uncomfortable for him. The blackstone beneath his feet was familiar, though the holes in the staircase down were not. He cuts across the pathways and along the edge of the water until he reaches the crater, putting his hands in the pockets of his coat and staring down at the ruin and rubble. 

There’s a flag in the hole, something fresh and new. It’s the original design, three X’s for every life the nation had lived in the end. This one isn’t the same as the others, not wartorn and covered in ash. It’s half-mast on a pole halfheartedly propped up by the bedrock in the depths of the crater, held up with hooks in the side of the wall for the lack of wind. 

Years from now that flag will have rotted away, leaving only a scar upon the earth to remember L'manberg by. It will only be known in stories told by the people who'd experienced it. There were no books or documents to keep safe, to preserve. 

L'mamberg was a ghost of an idea long dead. It had died a long time ago, with that election. 

Wilbur couldn't help but be glad. 

What he doesn’t expect is what is in the depths of the crater. It shines red in the light, which is what draws his attention. In the depths there’s something growing, like moss through the cracks of an old stone building. He watches it with half-lidded eyes, curious but not willing to put in the effort to see what it was. 

“Beautiful isn’t it?” 

Wilbur turns his head slightly to glance behind him, somehow unsurprised to see the smiling visage of Bad, all toothy fangs and crinkled eyes. There was no pain for Bad in seeing L’manberg like this, but there was no relief either. Just an enjoyment in the chaos the scar had experienced, single-minded and pure in the way only pure chaos could be. 

He hums, looking back at the crater. “In a way it’s almost poetic.” He replies, crossing his arms. The wind is stronger around the edges of the hole as the scar in the earth bent it, speeding it into slightly more than a gentle breeze. He closes his eyes and basks in the way he can feel it in his hair, the sensation of it against his skin. 

“I see you got someone to resurrect you, Ghostbur?” Bad asks, standing beside him. They hadn’t interacted much during Wilbur’s first life, only a brief period during Pogtopia as far as he could remember. It was refreshing to talk to someone who didn’t want to immediately stab him for what he’d done to L’manberg, even if it was nothing compared to what came after. 

Still, Bad didn’t feel quite right. A strange hum, like a music note slightly off key somewhere in his head. Nothing like what Schlatt or Dream had been and were respectively, but close enough that it set him on edge somewhat. Wilbur opened his eyes and considered him for a long moment before returning the smile tiredly. 

“It’s just Wilbur now.” He says, taking a deep breath and releasing it with a sigh. 

“Wilbur, then.” Bad agrees. “Everything alright? I thought you wouldn’t come here after your resurrection, considering the memories. Ghostbur always got a little fuzzy with his memories around here, from what I heard.” 

Wilbur laughed. “All of his memories were fuzzy. I would rip them out of my head because people at least pretended to like me when I was dead. But no, this doesn’t bring up bad memories. If anything, it brings up good ones.” 

And it did, because he’d been at a crater of devastation like this before a long time before Tommy had come to the family. A very long time ago, beside family members who felt infinite compared to himself. 

“It brings up good ones for me, too.” Bad agrees, and Wilbur can tell from just a look that he’s looking not at the crater but the red growing inside it. He doesn’t comment, though he’s tempted to. Instead he shifts his weight and turns slightly towards Bad, materializing an item from his inventory with barely a thought as he offers his hand to the demon. 

Bad takes it instinctively, then squints at it in confusion. The carved stone is cold, worn from a hundred fingertips. The eyeless chess piece stares back at him, faceless. 

Wilbur smiles at him, warm despite the way his eyes seem so blank as he looks at the demon before him unflinchingly. This song wasn’t broken, not like his, but he could tell just from a glance that it wasn’t right, either. He could hear the way the crater sung, not his symphony but something else. 

L’manberg was gone, ashes in his heart and the holes in his head, notes in his own shattered song. This wasn’t L’manberg, but something growing from her scars like blood weeps from a wound. 

_There are too many predators hiding within this flock of sheep._

“Welcome to the board, Bad.” He whispers, lips quirking into something more knowing. “I hope you play well.” 

He places his hand gently on Bad’s shoulder as he passes, the briefest touch of fingertips, then leaves in a sweep of cloak and exhaustion. Bad watches him go, white eyes as blank as ever even as they narrow slowly with thought. Wilbur hadn’t reacted to the Egg’s influence at all, and Bad dismissed it as simply him being too far, or perhaps the reach of the Egg not being strong enough yet. 

What Bad isn’t aware of is that Wilbur’s mind had faced a far greater enemy. 

_Himself._


	3. Eret Interlude (Promises kept)

In the grand scheme of things, they’re all villains. 

Wilbur is aware of this on a cosmic level. In someone’s story, he is their villain. The first stone. The first spark of a flame on a long string. For many of them, Wilbur had been an anchor. A warm fire and a song when the nights got dark, a spark of light in a dark tunnel. A stone placed in a blackstone wall. Words spoken through hushed lips, warm and inspiring yet empty. 

He’d been a guide, a helper, a stable pillar, an anchor that grounded them all to the bottom of the sea. But the problem with being an anchor is that eventually they rust. With every step he’d felt it growing in his heart and his head. His song slowed, distorted and cracked, and he smiled through it. 

There was no anchor for him but L’manberg. He’d torn himself apart fuelling the flames of that country, had settled inside the walls and watched over his people like a great bird protecting a nest. He’d thrown his wings over them and braced against a wailing storm of fire and ash until it caught across his feathers and he smoldered and cried from the pain when nobody could see his failures. 

Every death his people faced laid heavy on his heart like fishhooks caught into his lungs. A heart scratched out on his wrist. He knew he was failing, crumbling away like a cliff into the sea. He had thought his plan would help, that it would succeed. 

He’d barely missed the mark, and in return had received a flaming bolt in his chest. His anchor was gone, and he was left adrift in the unforgiving sea with no sail and nothing more to give. 

Then he’d had one life, a pulse as steady as the beat of the heart in his chest. He was vividly aware of every pulse of blood through his veins, and how little he had left of himself to give. He was so, so tired. He’d long run out of tears, his eyes dark underneath with shadows of lost sleep. His chest ached with a scar, tiny yet true, an arrow that had cleaved him through. 

He had no songs left to give, for his had rotten and so he had few. 

Wilbur remembers thinking of home, then. A long time ago, a cottage that was warm with fire and the smell of cocoa as his brothers laughed and his father joked as he brewed hot water for hot cocoa to ward away the chill of the snow. Campfires where he sung and they all took turns resting, confident in their trust of family. 

He thought of making a home far away where nobody would look, where he could sleep and sleep and sleep until he faded away like a painting left unframed in the sun. For a moment it had seemed so blissful. An empty existence where he could settle down and rest forever, free of war and strife. 

Then Pogtopia, and Techno had arrived with dark eyes and a smile, and Tommy had laughed and Wilbur had smiled at his brother who was not his brother, and then - 

It was so fast, when he looked back on it now. 

Wilbur had been a good general once, a long time ago. His skill hadn’t faded even in Pogtopia. He’d gathered, but not for war. Even the thought of it conjured the feeling of the sand grains against his fingertips, a growing collection of red and white topped with fuses made of string. 

_“I’m a long fuse.”_

He’d told Tommy that, once. Before they’d discovered Pogtopia beneath their feet, as grief struck his heart almost as hard as the respawn had. As he’d pressed a hand to his chest and tried to ignore the way his body screamed in agony of flame and arrows, the way a single heart on his wrist felt more like a sign of the slow pace towards nonexistence. 

Wilbur considered his wrist with dark eyes. 

_Heartless._

Somehow it seemed fitting. He lifted his head and considered the lanterns floating above the scar of the place that had consumed his heart and his mind. It was not the first time he’d been here, though Phil and Techno didn’t know it. Ranboo had seen him leaving, but had promised not to tell. 

Wilbur didn’t believe him, really, but he also didn’t care. What would it change that he visited L’manberg? It was a crater, empty and dark and glinting red in the depths as something grew inside. He listened, but heard none of her song, her symphony long gone. There was nothing left for him here but shadows of memories, and hours of work done by incorporeal hands gone to flame and pain. 

Ghostbur had cried here. Parchment under tired fingers, stained with ink and blood that bled blue. A sore throat from coughing up what little of him was left as he tried so desperately to be loved. 

Wilbur, the ony before, the one with a beating heart? He had bled here, died and lived on this land. Had suffered and cried and hollowed himself out until he was a shell, brutal and angry and desperate for someone to listen when nobody did. 

Now… 

There was nothing left here for him. So why did he keep coming back? 

“Wilbur.” A familiar voice said, warm and deep, and _oh, that’s why._

“Eret.” Wilbur said back, turning his head to look at the once-betrayer, now-king and again-friend. Eret seemed surprised, looking him up and down with mild confusion. Wilbur supposed that seeing him healthy again was a surprise, considering the last time Eret saw him. _That’s a fair reaction to seeing me again._ “Looks like Tubbo’s redecorated since I was last around.” 

Eret hummed, stepping down to meet Wil on the hill he'd claimed by the stairway, avoiding the holes with practiced ease. "I wouldn't call it redecorating." He replied. 

"Fair enough." Wilbur replied. For a minute or so they were quiet, one reminiscing and the other reliving a trauma that never seemed to end. 

"Do you remember that night when you caught me under L'mantree composing the anthem?" Wilbur asks, his voice quiet. 

"I do." Eret responds, confident and warm. 

Wilbur turns to him, and offers the king a book. Eret takes it almost hesitantly, like it was worth far more than the old leather and aged pages it was bound in. 

"Forgiveness" signed by WilburSoot. 

When Eret reads the pages, he finds the anthem rewritten carefully. Preserved scraps of the original book, burnt at the edges or stained with soot, are pressed between the pages like history. 

_And Eret_. 

"I did promise." Wilbur says into the quiet, only the sound of wind to greet the words. Eret closes the book reverently, and Wilbur offers his arms. The hug is long overdue, and Wilbur does not comment on the shaking shoulders just as Eret does not comment on how Wilbur's warmth is barely-there, and there was no heartbeat in his chest. 

"You don't know how much this means to me." Eret says once they pull apart. Wilbur smiled wryly in response. 

"For all that it matters now that it's gone." 

"It still lives on in our hearts." Eret replies, and there's a belief in their eyes that makes it hard for Wilbur to deny them. They aren't wrong, after all. 

They part on good terms, after Wilbur escorts them back to their castle. Some part of him feels more whole. _Unfinished business,_ he remembers. 

There’s a smile on his face as he steps through the portal, tired but relieved. 

It isn’t over yet. 


End file.
